We talked to Corey from Abbeywood Community School about his experience on the Airbus Future Engineers Programme 2025.
Corey is a year 9 student from Abbeywood Community School in Stoke Gifford. Since September last year, Corey has been taking part in the Airbus Future Engineers Programme at the site in Filton. For 20 weeks, Corey and 19 of his fellow Year 9s have been spending 3 hours a week at the AIRTec building in Filton, working alongside a group of Airbus apprentices on a range of projects.
The programme offers a unique, hands on and immersive experience for the students. In the first 10 weeks, they learn about aviation and what takes place at the Filton site and through a combination of lectures and practical tasks and challenges, the physics of flight, hydraulics, stress testing, wing design and more. In the second 10 weeks, they are tasked with one big project: to design, build and fly a drone. As important as all the technical stuff, is the way the programme offers students the chance to learn, in a hands on way, about the workplace and the skills that they need to succeed.
During the penultimate workshop, I sat down with Corey to ask him about his experience on the programme, what he has enjoyed, what he has learned along the way and how he feels he has changed over the year.
I started by asking him to tell me what he has learned about the workplace and skills needed to succeed:
“I’ve learnt lots, I had no knowledge before and I know so much technical stuff now but also, it’s fun and nice and positive here. I think employers want you to show passion, to work hard and be able to give things a go. I’ve definitely learned to do that.
You need to be organised and talk to the other people in your team. We have had a laugh, but we’ve always got the job done.”
The students are deliberately grouped with other students they don’t know at the start, and they stay in these teams all the way through the programme. Each team has two apprentices attached to it, to make a group of six. I asked Corey about his team and if he’d noticed any changes over the programme:
“Yes! We didn’t know each other before; I’d never spoken to two of the students in my group. It was awkward to start with but the challenging work we had to do brought us together. We had to talk to each other to get things done in the time. We’ve gelled as a group now.”
I moved on to ask Corey his thoughts on his apprentice ‘mentors’:
“They’re great guys. Fun, helpful and very positive. They’ve been so generous with their knowledge, I’ve learned so much. I feel very comfortable around them, like the gap has closed as the weeks go on. I reckon I could be one of them in the future, an apprentice at Airbus. That’s the dream.”
Finally, I asked Corey to tell me how he feels about himself and his abilities and school:
“I’ve grown in confidence; I am way better at speaking to others now. I feel more confident at school with everything, I’m more into learning and know I need to really tune in to get where I want to be.”
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